| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: one Seven-hundred-and-fiftieth or other, with whom neither the issue nor
the man is closely considered, that one, the President, on the contrary,
is the elect of the nation, and the act of his election is the trump
card, that, the sovereign people plays out once every four years. The
elected National Assembly stands in a metaphysical, but the elected
President in a personal, relation to the nation. True enough, the
National Assembly presents in its several Representatives the various
sides of the national spirit, but, in the President, this spirit is
incarnated. As against the National Assembly, the President possesses a
sort of divine right, he is by the grace of the people.
Thetis, the sea-goddess, had prophesied to Achilles that he would die in
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: their voyage of investigation, and in two hours were out of sight
of the sole remaining fragment of Gibraltar.
CHAPTER XV
AN ENIGMA FROM THE SEA
Lieutenant Procope had been left on board in charge of the _Dobryna_,
and on resuming the voyage it was a task of some difficulty
to make him understand the fact that had just come to light.
Some hours were spent in discussion and in attempting to penetrate
the mysteries of the situation.
There were certain things of which they were perfectly certain.
They could be under no misapprehension as to the distance they
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: rhetoric of the soul--if we would proceed, not empirically but
scientifically, in the one case to impart health and strength by giving
medicine and food, in the other to implant the conviction or virtue which
you desire, by the right application of words and training.
PHAEDRUS: There, Socrates, I suspect that you are right.
SOCRATES: And do you think that you can know the nature of the soul
intelligently without knowing the nature of the whole?
PHAEDRUS: Hippocrates the Asclepiad says that the nature even of the body
can only be understood as a whole. (Compare Charmides.)
SOCRATES: Yes, friend, and he was right:--still, we ought not to be
content with the name of Hippocrates, but to examine and see whether his
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: upon which he lay, his hands crossed upon his breast.
Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him.
The wonders of the "Arabian Nights" were wonders no longer,
for here, in East-End London, was a true magician's palace,
lacking not its beautiful slave lacking not its enchanted prince!
"It is Aziz, my brother," said Karamaneh.
We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment.
Karamaneh knelt and bent over the boy, stroking his hair
and whispering to him lovingly. I, too, bent over him;
and I shall never forget the anxiety in the girl's eyes as she
watched me eagerly whilst I made a brief examination.
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
